September 2007

Retaliatory steps that comply with world trade rules could be found against China and India if they fail to help international efforts to cut emissions of carbon dioxide, a senior US diplomat said on Tuesday.

Yesterday's article on upcoming global warming negotiations ("Bush to host climate-change conference," World) would have been better if it had not relied so heavily on the views of one environmental pressure group. For example, it probably is true that the nations that undertook mandatory commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions under the Kyoto Protocol are "very unlikely to take on more ambitious targets post-2012 unless the United States comes in with some commitments and unless there's also something more from the major emerging economies," as Elliot Diringer of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change said.

ABC's World News this past Sunday showed the tagline of one of CEI's famous (infamous?) TV ads on global warming, which we first aired in May, 2006.  In the segment, correspondent Bill Bakemore characterizes it this way:  "Public awareness [of global warming] lagged behind, partly because of a disinformation campaign funded by the fossil fuel industry." (See the segment here. And you can see the full ad, "Glaciers,” here)

In fact the fossil fuel industry did not fund any part of the ad campaign.  CEI developed the ad in-house; we produced it and a companion, and bought air time, on a shoestring budget of under $60,000.  We're glad to see that the ads still have "legs", over a year after they were unveiled (Newsweek also displayed them on the web version of its August 13th cover story on "global warming deniers").

As for ABC's claim of disinformation, we challenge anyone to show us a single inaccuracy in those ads.  And if they had an impact on public awareness, that is simply great.

Developing and rich countries both need to do their bit to slash carbon emissions in an effort to tackle climate change, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said today.

The environment secretary, Hilary Benn, yesterday called on the US to agree to mandatory goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, warning that the alternative was dangerous climate change.
But he stopped short of calling for binding emissions targets for China's growing economy. "China in the end will have to decide what they are going to contribute," he said.

"We strongly believe that no adaptation plan or strategy would be effective without enhanced financing and greater technological support and access for developing countries," Pakistani Environment Minister Syed Faisal Saleh Hayat said at the one-day summit.

The battle to beat climate change has come down to one weapon — the price of carbon. And analysts say it is not working.

Are you a carbon-using Christian? Feeling guilty about all that carbon dioxide (CO2) you pump into the atmosphere by such awful things as breathing, heating and cooling your home, lighting your work or study space, or driving to church? Now, like traditional sinners whose only mistake was breaking the Ten Commandments, you can atone for your carbon sins by buying carbon offsets from the Evangelical Climate Initiative — though I thought it was pre-Reformation Roman Catholicism, not Protestant evangelicalism, that endorsed indulgences.

The fallacious idea that one can make jobs by destroying others is a variation of Bastiat's Broken Window fallacy. As Bastiat explained, imagine some shopkeepers get their windows broken by a rock-throwing child. At first, people sympathize with the shopkeepers, until someone suggests that the broken windows really aren't that bad. After all, they "create work" for the glazier, who might buy food, benefiting the grocer, or clothes, benefiting the tailor. If enough windows are broken, the glazier might even hire an assistant, creating a new job. Did the child then do a public service by breaking the windows? Would it be good public policy to simply break windows at random? No, because what's not seen in this scenario is what the shopkeepers would have done with the money that they've had to use to fix their windows. If they hadn't needed to fix the windows, the shopkeepers would have put the money to work in their shops, buying more stock from their suppliers, or perhaps adding a coffee-bar, or hiring new stock-people. Before the child's action, the shopkeepers had the economic value of their windows and the money to hire a new assistant or buy more goods. After the child's action, the shopkeepers have their new windows but no new assistant or new goods, and society, as a whole, has lost the value of the old set of windows.